Piping In North America
Taken from the 40th annual commemorative program.

Seumas MacNeill, joint principal of the College of Piping, was of a Gigha family of pipers. He was taught by his uncle, Archie MacNeill the Blind Piper, and gained most of the important prizes in piping, including the Gold Medal for Piobaireachd at Oban in 1962. He was founder-member of the Board of Examiners of the Institute of Piping and one of the judges of piping for the Scottish Pipe Band Association.
Seumas MacNeill regularly presented his own programmes on radio and he was no stranger to television as a performer and commentator. A founder of The Piping Times which he edited, he wielded a prolific pen for press and periodicals.
Mr. MacNeill was a senior lecturer in the Natural Philosophy department of the University of Glasgow.

One of the great advantages of being a piper is the opportunity it gives for travelling abroad and meeting all kinds of interesting people. Not that this was always the case, because only in the last twenty-five years or so has the culture of the Highland bagpipe begun to expand so rapidly that there was any need for pipers to travel abroad.

As a result, teachers of piping are in fair demand, and those of us who have the time and inclination can look on a visit to the United States or Canada as a normal part of our yearly round. In several parts of North America there have been established some excellent summer schools. I think it began in the Cape Breton Highlands of Nova Scotia. The Reverend A.W.R. MacKenzie, director of the Gaelic College there, with a foresight which will always be interpreted by the Wee Frees as divine inspiration, started in 1954 the practice of having a visiting piping instructor from Scotland. But it was not until the early 1960’s that the second summer school for pipers was established in North America. This was the Invermark school, initiated by James Lindsay and staffed first by Thomas Pearston, later by John MacFadyen for a number of years and then with Donald Lindsay in charge and the late Robert U. Brown as principal instructor.

In 1967, George Beley of Brockville, Ontario, with the support of the 1000 Island International Council, began the annual Summer School of Scottish Performing Arts. Modelled to some extent on the Gaelic College, it provides facilities for pipers, drummers and Highland dancers, and attracts students in almost equal numbers from both sides of the border.

For some years, also John MacFadyen has been teaching smaller groups at Wilkesport, Ontario and last year initiated a new summer school at Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina. Donald MacLeod has concentrated his activities mainly further west, in Saskatchewan, and John MacLellan has gone all the way across the continent in recent years, to Washington, Idaho and California. I shall be going to Dallas, Texas, in June; to the 1000 Islands school in July, and to Lake Sequoia, California in August.

But summer schools can only provide the basic groundwork, or the icing on the cake, depending on the stage of the student. The students themselves, ably assisted and inspired by several competent instructors throughout the country, do the hard but interesting work which makes all the difference between struggling and shining as a performer.

The Highland Games and indoor competitions provide tremendous encouragement and stimulate practice at important times of the year. As a result, there are now Americans and Canadians competing with distinction and success at some of the premier competitions in Scotland.

Sometimes, sitting quietly at home in Scotland, I wonder if we are not perhaps creating a monster, albeit a friendly one, which will in time destroy us — or at least push us into obscurity. The position in piping now is similar to the situation in golf at the beginning of this century. The Scots invented it, became the experts at it, then sent their teachers to America. Today it is hardly remembered that clouting the gutty ball with a well formed cleek or jigger was at one time the prerogative of the Scot. Perhaps the day will eventually come when Americans and Canadians will consider it rather quaint that the Scots also play the bagpipe.

Reprinted from Delaware Scottish Games Program, June 2, 1973